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A winter chill hovered over Gaza last year as Israel finally began its long planned “operation.” But Israel’s operation
“Hot Winter” petered out in a matter of weeks. Perhaps it would have been better named “luke warm winter.” Now the Israelis are back, this time in “Operation Cast Lead.” Read
background on these events below, and the latest updates on “Cast Lead” are here.
Earlier this year, air strikes, and heavy artillery backed
up Israeli tanks and troops in fierce clashes in the Gaza strip as March came in like a lion. Over 100 Palestinians died in early fighting, including many civilians. The situation simmered at a low boil throughout
March and April of 2008, with cross border attacks by Hamas led Palestinian forces and counter operations by Israeli forces.
Headlines from the period included:
* US warships moving into the Eastern Med.
* Saudi Arabia warning its citizens to leave Lebanon.
* Hamas Prime Minister’s Office bombed in Gaza.
* Hamas fires at least 90 Qassam missiles and 5 Katyusha rockets into Israeli soil.
* Peace talks suspended, restarted, suspended.
* Jerusalem Post reported: “The IDF's ultimate aim is to topple the Hamas regime.”
* Palestinians stage violent protests in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, West Bank.
* 1 killed, 40 injured in clashes with Israeli security forces.
* Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters join protests in Lebanon.
* Israeli armor battalion stages training in anti-tank missile defensive maneuvers on Lebanese border.
* Tensions mount as the Winter War heats up in the Spring.
“It’s time to act, our operation will press on and Hamas will be responsible for the consequences.” - Ehud Barak, March 1, 200. In an odd twist on the prediction I have
made concerning this attack, the Israelis are calling the operation “Hot Winter.”
Perhaps the operation might best be renamed “Luke Warm.” Olmert returned from Tokyo and apparently
ordered the immediate withdrawal of Israeli tanks and troops from northern Gaza after 5 days of fighting. The pullback could have been a feint accommodating the arrival of Condi Rice, who is attempting to restart
peace talks. Hamas immediately claimed victory and turned out hundreds for a jubilant street celebration on Monday, March 3. The first 5 days of the operation achieved nothing significant, in tactical or strategic
terms. Rockets continued to fall on Israel from a defiant Hamas.
As Secretary Rice prepared to leave the region, Israeli troops again crossed into segments of Northern Gaza. Hamas has been threatening
reprisals inside Israel from infiltrated attack squads. One appears to have made its mark with an attack in West Jerusalem on March 6, killing 8 and wounding another 35 civilians. This will only stiffen Israeli
resolve and feed coal to the fire under those who are now advocating a much stronger incursion into Gaza to eliminate Hamas once and for all. The Cabinet was reportedly deciding on targets and the extent of the
renewed operation. If they needed a Causus Beli beyond the nuisance missile attacks, the March 6th incident has served nicely, and also prepared US “viewers” for what they may soon see in Gaza when the
tanks roll.
By March 10, Olmert and Barak were synchronizing their views that the “operation” would continue until Israel had achieved three primary goals: 1) an end to the harassing missile
attacks from Gaza, 2) reduction or elimination of arms smuggling into Gaza across the Egyptian border, and 3) an end to terrorist attacks on Israel.
I predict now that no matter what Israel does, they will
not achieve any of these objectives, just as the US has failed to prevent the very same things in Iraq after throwing the cream of the world’s mightiest military at the problem for the last six years. This low
level war has been going on for the whole of Israel’s 60 year life as a nation. It will not be resolved by Operation Hot Winter in Gaza because it cannot be isolated from the general situation in Palestine
itself. Case in point: Israel placed all zones bordering Gaza, Lebanon and Syria on high alert for potential terrorist infiltration as their operation proceeds. Clearly, this is not simply a case of tackling Hamas
in Gaza. Israel must realize that they still have Hezbollah in Lebanon, and their backers in both Syria and Iran to eventually deal with if they are ever to achieve the goals they have set for themselves. And
dealing with these more powerful forces will require diplomacy and fair negotiation. In the end, Israel will find that there is no military solution to the problem they face. They will have to concede, as the famous
Israeli writer Eli Wisel concluded, that “Peace is our gift to each other.”
BACKGROUND
Time magazine reported on in Early December: “Israel's army has completed plans for
a large offensive in the Gaza Strip and is only waiting for government approval for the action.” Approval, of a sort, seems to have come late February, when Israeli troops entered Northern Gaza.
Earlier
in the summer of 2007, the West was reminded again just what a car load of trouble the invasion of Iraq has bred. Someone fell ill at a popular nightclub near Piccalilli Circus in London. When the ambulance
attendants arrived they noticed a silver Mercedes that appeared to be smoking and notified the police, who soon discovered the vehicle was packed with fuel, shrapnel nails, and several suspicious propane canisters.
How ironic that the very things that sent Britain to Iraq, oil and gas, should be fashioned into a car bomb and delivered to Piccalilli Circus, the symbolic heart of London’s nightlife. The symbol is replete
with meaning, for cars, gasoline, natural gas and our circus lifestyle are the crux of the entire intervention in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The message was blatant: you want the oil and gas? Well here
it is.
Perhaps it was a near miss detonation that narrowly averted a tragedy, but the point remains that the technique of building and deploying VBIDS (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices) is passing
from one infected cell to another in the Petri dish of Iraq, and now the contagion can easily spread throughout the body politic of our societies as well. The infusion of 150,000 US and British troops in Iraq has
acted like a failed course of antibiotics. The dose was never enough to do the job required, and all the invasion accomplished was to invite the infection of radicalized terror groups into an ethnic tribal war. Now,
after facing down the best the West has to offer in military terms, these groups have become “drug resistant,” a deadly strain of radicalism that could migrate to the wider Middle East, and elsewhere. We
have the myopic and oil-addled stubbornness of Bush and Cheney to thank for that. War on terror, indeed. And then again, we have our own love affair with cars to blame as well.
In case you haven’t
noticed lately, the Middle East is a bit like that loaded Mercedes, a bomb set to go off near most of the world’s remaining oil and natural gas. The region continues to heat up, and the promise of more
violence looms like a heat sheen on our near horizon.
Seizing a majority of the newly elected Palestinian government seats was apparently not enough for Hamas. Two weeks of rising violence, with pitched gun
battles in the streets of Gaza, saw Hamas systematically root out Fatah loyalists and seize control of the entire sector. On the West Bank, Fatah has vowed revenge, and Hamas appears to be beefing up for an
inevitable confrontation there as well. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has begun re-infiltrating outposts and hamlets in Southern Lebanon, and engaging in select gunfights with factions loyal to the Lebanese
government.
This resurgence by Hamas, perhaps the best organized and financed political group in the Middle East, shows how completely ineffective the Israeli foray into Southern Lebanon and Gaza was last
summer in diffusing the threat from this group and Hezbollah. But hold your horses, get ready for more guns and steel in the Middle East, and expect a significant Israeli incursion into Gaza to take on the
emboldened Hamas fighters. Barak sounded ominous on Israel’s Army Radio station in mid-September when he said: “We are getting closer to carrying out a widespread operation in Gaza which, for many
reasons, has not taken place in the past weeks.” The incursion never came. In its place the Annapolis peace conference allowed cooler heads to prevail, if only for a while.
With all the hoopla about the
Iraq report on the surge behind us, here’s how things ratcheted up in the last year:
On June 25th, 2007 The World Tribune reported: “Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told
the Cabinet that the Jewish state faces five adversaries in what could result in an imminent confrontation. Yadlin cited Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and Al Qaida.” In September the Israeli parliament
formally declared Gaza an “Hostile Entity.” Israeli PM Olmert appears convinced that he must take decisive military action soon to check the rise of Hamas, and hard liner Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived
in Washington to begin preparing the American people with his nightly appearances on the news. But the Israelis, for all their élan and military prowess, will find 12,000 heavily armed fighters waiting for them in
the Devil’s Den of the Gaza strip, which is now on a war footing. Urban street fighting is always a nightmare for any conventional military force. Will they have the stomach for it this summer? Rumors are that
at least two full divisions, comprising over 20,000 Israeli troops, will be thrown into the labyrinthine warren of Gaza. The fighting will likely be bitter, bloody and laden with the potential for an explosive wider
war.
HamasHamas has been lobbing nuisance missile attacks at Israel for weeks, answered by “pinpoint” Israeli air strikes. On September 11th, 2007 the nice folks in Gaza celebrated 9/11 with this
headline as reported by Israeli web site Debka: “Sixty-nine Israeli soldiers injured when three missiles launched from Gaza hit their boot camp early Tuesday. Ministers demand serious military action.”
That action could set off the Middle East like a string of firecrackers. Should Hezbollah join the rocket festival again, as we saw last summer, the whole of Northern Israel could become part of the war
zone.
We saw how quickly the 2006 war in Lebanon ended up sparking tension with Syria, and with Israel pointing a finger at Iran. There is no denying the fact that the principal backer of Hamas and Hezbollah,
for finance and weapons, continues to be Iran, with the complicity of Syria as well. This potential foray into Gaza could be the perfect glide-path to the long discussed “solution” for Iran. In recent
months Iranian generals have been huddling with their Syrian counterparts, perhaps over how to coordinate strategy should things blow up in the region. Iran announced it had plans to “bomb Israel” if
they are attacked. Israel must certainly realize that the end of the road they walk when they roll the tanks into Gaza will inevitably lead them to a confrontation with Damascus and Tehran.
Beyond that, the
war Israel fought against Hamas and Hezbollah last summer was, in many ways, a proxy war between the US and Iran, and this one, should it flare up again, will be no different. Both the US and Britain have been
accusing Iran of meddling in the Iraq war for many months now . In fact, British troops have observed Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops crossing the border into Iraq, complete with helicopter airlift for the ride!
The latest operation “Cast Lead” was preceded by days of intense air strikes to pound Hamas police, government and military sites in Gaza. You can read full coverage here
Article by: John Schettler
Original article: July, 2007 - Updated as events warrant.
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